“Calcutta: Such nuggets from history made up writer Jenny Balfour-Paul’s hour-long Bengal Club Library Talk, organised in association with The Telegraph, on November 8.”

“I am a great reader of travelogues, enjoy a lot of biographies and am always willing to read an historical investigation. This book managed to tick all those boxes as well as those of personal odyssey and quickly love story so I was fairly certain I was onto a winner … The book weaves Thomas’s own descriptions and journals with jenny’s own writing so much so that it is almost co-authored. Thomas is rescued from obscurity and given back his voice in a way which is frequently quite moving. Life in India at the time of the Raj is re-created, as is the atmosphere of a Victorian vicarage and the ghosts of an abandoned mansion.

I read the book quite slowly but never wanted to put it aside and was pulled into Jenny’s pilgrimage to find Thomas in the mists of the past”

“The book evolves into a conversation between herself and her subject, with Machell beginning to write parts of it himself, so that she confesses: “Now I no longer know who is writing this book.” Unorthodox? Certainly, but no less entertaining for that.”

Helena Attlee, Country Life.

“Go and read @jennyindigo1 ‘s amazing #DeeperThanIndigo, a journey which takes you to extraordinary and increasingly metaphysical realms…”